Meet Preview
The Fighting Illini women's cross country team will be back in action on Friday, Oct. 25 when they close out the regular season at the Illini Open. The meet will take place at the UI Arboretum and begin at 4:00 p.m. CT.

Coach Jones on the Meet
"We'll have a smaller group competing this week," said Coach Jones. "We'll have the group that competed at the Bradley Classic competing this Friday. We're still looking to make some progress. Every race is an opportunity to test ourselves and to get better. For some people it's a chance for them to demonstrate that they should be traveling to the Big Ten Championships."

"We always get excited running in front of the home crowd. We like the venue. The Arboretum is a beautiful place to be and it's great course to run on. I think it will be an opportunity to see how much we've improved over the course of the season. The objective isn't to have a time trial. We measure ourselves not on the basis of times but how we compete against other teams. There will be good competition, a lot of the teams in the state will be represented here so we want to see how we measure up."

A Look at the Competition
Five teams will be traveling to Urbana, Ill. on Friday, as the Illini will face Bradley, Butler, Eastern Illinois, Loyola, and Northwestern.

Last Time Out
Seven Illini competed in the White Race of the Pre-National Invitational on Oct. 19. The team finished fourth out of 35 teams, and was led by Alyssa Schneider for the fourth time this season. Schneider timed a 21:09 to finish 8th overall, with Katie Porada (21:43) and Amanda Fox (21:44) finishing next for the squad. Hanna Winter (22:23) and Audrey Blazek (22:45) each set new personal-bests, while Stephanie Morgan (22:49) and Britten Petrey (23:41) rounded out the competition for the Orange and Blue.